LABOUR-MANAGEMENT CULTURE

A set of shared assumptions, beliefs and practices about people and work that defines the nature of the workplace and leads to common work habits and interaction patterns, including shared attitudes and values.

"To steer the SNCF corporate culture towards change, its Human Resources Department is now actively promoting the legitimacy of the trade unions as full partners and the mutual trust required for productive dialogue. […] Consequently, the HR Department is striving to implement these new principles in its everyday dialogue with labour. Setting an example is one way to disseminate the new labour-management culture, although there may be occasional obstacles, as much from the management side as from the union side."
(Dubédat, A.-M., New SNCF Approach to Peaceful Labour-Management Relations, Japan Railway & Transport Review, No. 14, visited 2011-05-04)

A productive labour-management culture seeks to create a system of shared values and beliefs common to a company's management, employees, organizational structures, and control systems in order to produce more productive behavioural norms. This generally means including all key players in decision processes, most notably unions and management. In this way, labour and management relations can be improved. A labour-management culture of collaboration can be facilitated by training both management and labour to make the cooperative process work. This should lead to substantially improved service delivery and a better work environment.
(adapted from DCwatch, Mayor Williams Meets with Labor/Management Partnership Council, 1999, visited 2011-08-04)

Increasing Productivity

This management strategy is being used by many large firms globally in order to increase productivity. When the labour-management culture is one that encourages cooperation, the work environment and attitude of workers improve, which in turn improves the quality of the work produced. Although this concept could also refer to a culture centred on conflict, it is used almost exclusively to refer to an increase in cooperation between management and unions.

For example in Korea, the government has undertaken a project to boost the productivity of medium-sized businesses by providing free consulting, printed resources and seminars in order to increase cooperation among unions and management. Their program identifies several steps to creating an amicable labour management culture:

• Amicable resolution of labor disputes
• Growing use of "no strike agreements"
• Labour dispute resolution by applying steadfast principles and relevant laws.

(adapted from Korean Ministry of Finance and Economy, The Progress and Challenge of Labor Sector Reform during the Kim Dae-jung Administration and from International Labour Organization (ILO), Skills and Employability Department (EMP/SKILLS), visited 2011-08-05)